N asim stares into Sariya’s deep blue eyes.
“Why would you not think to find me here?” she asks.
“Because you were not on Ghayavand.”
She motions to the forest, and Nasim falls into step alongside her. Unlike Sariya, who moves like a bee over a field of wildflowers, the going is difficult for him. He trudges, the deep snow thumping as each footstep breaks the surface.
She glances down-no more than this-and Nasim’s steps are light upon the snow. Yadhan, however, continues to struggle, and she appears more and more uncomfortable with this exchange. Sariya pays so little attention to her that Nasim wonders if Sariya knows she’s there.
With a simple but elegant motion, Sariya sweeps the air with one hand, as if to indicate the entirety of this place they walk within. “Does the aether stop at the borders of Ghayavand? Is it bound by land or sea?”
Nasim takes in the terrain once more. He thought this a place that Sariya carved from her dreams, made real by her will over the course of centuries and the peculiarities of the aether that Sariya had managed to uncover, but now that he looks, he realizes how similar it is to the land of dreams that embraced him in his younger years. The aether is the land of dreams, after all, the place where Adhiya and Erahm touch. If Sariya tried hard enough, could she not have unraveled its secrets?
“Where are you?”
“Why, do you wish to join me?”
“I don’t know where I wish to go.”
Sariya smiled. “Then come.”
They continue into the woods. They pass well into the trees before Nasim realizes Yadhan has not followed. She watches from the edge of the forest, ducking beneath the lowest branches to watch him, unwilling to take even a single step into the trees.
Nasim doesn’t want to continue alone, but he cannot allow Sariya to sense his worry. If she senses weakness, all will be lost.
They come to a rise, and soon the trees part, revealing a white monolith standing tall and proud, as if it considers itself the lord of all it surveys. It is taller than any of the trees that stand outside the clearing.
Sariya considers the stone, for the time being ignoring Nasim.
And then Nasim realizes.
The stone. The piece of the Atalayina. The one he’d hidden in Sariya’s tower. He feels it within the strata of rock that forms the monolith, and he is sure that Sariya feels the same. He is confused, for his memories tell a different story. Khamal dropped it onto the floor of Sariya’s bedroom within her tower. How, then, had it become trapped within the monolith that stands before him?
But of course, this place, its nature… He stands in the aether, true, but he also stands in a place of Sariya’s making. This is her demesne. By Sariya’s hand it would have been formed and reformed until-as improbable as it seems-the tower and everything within it would have expanded, bringing into being all that surrounds him, including this monolith.
Now it is a riddle to be solved. Sariya has isolated the Atalayina, separated it from the rest, giving her time to remove the stone without damaging it. Surely she sensed the stone in the weeks after her awakening. Had she the power, she would already have retrieved it, making it clear she hasn’t yet unraveled Khamal’s spell. This is why she brought him here, to retrieve the Atalayina for her.
But of course, this is also a trap. Sariya will not let him have it. “I must return the stone to Ghayavand,” Nasim says.
“Ghayavand is Muqallad’s now. Take the stone and come with me to Galahesh.”
Nasim turns in the snow and looks back through the trees the way they’d come. “There are those on Ghayavand who need me.”
“Ashan?”
“Among others.”
“You may think him a bright star, Khamal, but had he been alive when we were at our height, he would have shined no brighter than a wisp.”
“I am not Khamal,” Nasim says sharply, “and you may all have been bright-you may be bright still-but look at what has come from your radiance.”
She smiles, the expression calming, so much so that Nasim grows afraid. “We can return to our greatness,” she says. She isn’t merely implying that they could return, but that they will. “But if you feel the path lies through Ghayavand”-she bows her head and motions to the monolith-“then so be it.”
With that she turns and walks through the woods. As she passes between two larch, their branches part and the snow upon them falls soft and forgiving to the blanket of white beneath. And then she is gone, leaving Nasim alone with the wind and the tall white stone.
He waits a long time, thinking surely she watches from afar, but try as he might he cannot sense her.
With his feet still floating upon the snow, he steps forward and touches the stone’s white surface. It is not cold, but warm, like a slab of obsidian at sunset.
He thought that when he found this piece of the Atalayina that it would reveal itself to him, that it would be granted when he came near. Did not Khamal plan for this, after all? He hid the stone mere days before his plans came to fruition, when Sariya and Muqallad together drove the khanjar into his chest, so why would he not have made it such that the stone would be revealed upon his return?
But of course it couldn’t be as simple as that. The easier it was for him, the easier it would be for Sariya and Muqallad to retrieve it.
In the end he decides that more likely than not Khamal never meant for him to inherit any sort of key to pry the Atalayina away from its hiding place. Passing this knowledge on is difficult, but more than this, whatever he did might have been altered by the other two arqesh. For good or ill, Khamal expected that Nasim would be able to rely on the abilities he would inherit. What he hadn’t anticipated was Muqallad’s final spell, the one that crippled Nasim upon his birth.
The notion of being on his own-unable to rely on anything from Khamal-is freeing in a way that Nasim hadn’t expected. Through his dreams and the history of the time of the sundering, he had felt responsible for Khamal, responsible for his legacy. To now be left to his own devices made it feel as though the future, at least some small part of it, now lay wholly in his hands. Not Khamal’s. Not Ashan’s or Nikandr’s. Not even Soroush’s. His own.
He touches the stone gently. The warmth after so long in the cold makes his fingers tingle. For a long time he merely listens, waits for it to tell him something-anything-of its nature, but when this proves unfruitful he tries to sense the structure of the monolith: whether the Atalayina is high or low, whether it is truly within the stone or whether this is all some ruse on Sariya’s part to draw information from him. The presence of the Atalayina is strong and distinct. It is exactly as he remembered. The feeling sits deep within him, like an animal eager to leave its den. It is worry and satisfaction and hope. It is substantial, as if something weighty forms within him. It is the feeling one gets when standing on the edge of a precipice-the wonder and fear and exhilaration. These things are the Atalayina, and there is no mistaking it.
Why, then? Why is it so difficult to isolate?
It is important to realize that this place is not of the material world. It is largely a place of Sariya’s making, though there are still pieces that are real, like Nasim himself and the Atalayina. Not knowing its true nature, Sariya has folded the stone into her world to keep it safe from everyone, even Muqallad, for despite her words, she desperately wants the stone to be hers.
He will use this to his advantage. He must, or he will never be done.
And then an idea comes to him. Instead of drawing upon a vanahezhan to try to draw it forth-which is something Sariya would have tried over and over-he summons instead a dhoshahezhan, a spirit made from the stuff of life. Of all the hezhan they are the least understood. Qiram use them to grant lift to their skiffs or to the ships of the Landed, but there is so much more that has been forgotten: the way things grow, the way they die, the way souls interacts-all of this is due to the flow of life that runs through and between them.
He uses this now and focuses not on himself, not on the stone, but on the world Sariya has created. The aether normally acts as a medium through which the hezhan can experience life in Erahm, but they are now in the aether, and this place is tied to Sariya herself. It isn’t so difficult, then, to act as a conduit himself so that the hezhan can feed upon Sariya — at least this one small part of her.
He gives himself to the hezhan. It feels like sunlight running through him, or the sound of the sea, or the darkness that swallows the stars. He revels in it, for it has been so long since he has touched the hezhan without the need for another.
He feels it begin to feed on Sariya. She is here. She is everywhere. This place is her, and the dhoshahezhan draws upon her mightily.
He also feels-for the first time in this place-something familiar, a presence, a woman, and one he’s felt before. She was on the skiff that bore him and Ashan to Ghayavand as Nikandr chased them. The Duchess of Khalakovo, their Matra, had attempted to assume him like some crow she hoped to command, and Nasim was deeper into his dreams than he’d been in a long time. There on that skiff, a woman came to save the Matra. Her name is Atiana Radieva Vostroma, and she is here now.
He wonders if Sariya can sense her. Perhaps she can. Perhaps Atiana’s presence is somehow for Sariya’s benefit.
Nasim, Atiana calls. Nasim, you cannot do this.
He wonders where she is, how she came to be here, watching him, and he knows that it cannot be without Sariya’s blessing. It cannot. How else can a Landed woman, even a Matra, end up here?
He allows the dhoshahezhan to continue to feed as he focuses upon the stone. The Atalayina becomes more real. It solidifies within the stone before him.
She knows what you’re doing. She’s allowing it.
This gives him pause, but really, it’s too late. The discomfort Sariya was feeling has risen to pain, and the Atalayina is now close enough to touch.
He reaches out with trembling fingers, but as he does, the stone loosens. It powders away as if it is made not of stone, but so much dust.
The wind heightens. The trees sway and sigh and creak. The top of the stone high above him begins to ablate. It flies like a swirl of snow at the crest of a drift. The gust becomes a gale. It swirls around the stone, sending biting sand downward into the trees, into the snow at Nasim’s feet, into his face and scalp and skin.
He cowers as the wind reaches new heights.
Nasim, run!
This time, he listens. He turns and bolts through the trees, but as he does he can feel clearly for the first time the Atalayina. It is at the center of swirling sand behind him. It nearly makes him pause, but the sand has begun not only to bite, but burn. It sears his skin where it touches.
Sariya knows what’s happening. She’s known all along, but was waiting for Nasim to release the stone that she might have it.
But Nasim is not so young as she might think, nor as callow.
He still touches the dhoshahezhan, he still allows it to feed upon Sariya, but instead of trying to intensify this connection, he shifts it to the stone, the piece of the Atalayina that now lies behind him.
As the sand falls among the trees and the needles burst into flame, he shifts this world around the Atalayina. Sariya hopes to take it, to have it land in her very lap, but Nasim alters its course. He instead guides it toward another.
He guides it to Atiana.
If all goes well, she will be the one who ends up with the stone, not Sariya. He only hopes that he was wrong to have mistrusted her earlier. He hopes she is not in league with Sariya, for if she is, Sariya and Muqallad will have what they’ve wanted all along-all three pieces of the stone-and then they will have it remade.
The burning sand and fire have spread. Smoke chokes the forest, and the burning branches bar his way. He cannot breathe. He coughs, using his hands to fend off the heat, to fend off the branches, but it’s too much.
He falls to his knees, and though he tries to crawl, he is too weak. He collapses, his lungs gasping for breath.
It is then that he hears footsteps crunching through the snow. Hands lift him and pull him onward. He can hardly breathe, his chest wracking with painful coughs, and he can see nothing, so blinded by tears and smoke are his eyes, but the hands that guide him are strong and sure, and soon he has broken through to the plain beyond the borders of the forest.
Yadhan has found him. She drags him farther and farther away, until at last he can go no more and he collapses into the snow.
He coughs until his chest hurts. His hands grow numb as they sink into the snow, but after the heat from the forest, it is a gift granted by the kindness of the fates.
Hearing the roar of the flames behind him, he rolls over, and what he sees takes his breath away.
The entire forest is ablaze. From horizon to horizon, it burns. It boils. Flames of gold and amber and rust twist and meld and part. Black smoke roils high into the sky like a wall both amorphous and impenetrable.
With Yadhan’s help he manages to stand. It cannot have happened so quickly, but he reminds himself that this place is not real. What’s more shocking is that Sariya tried to kill him. It was something he thought her incapable of without Muqallad at her side. Then again, if she’s convinced the world is about to end one way or another, toward what extremes might she be pushed?
This, Nasim says to himself as he stares at the forest.
But at what cost? She may have thought the risk worth it, but he knows that this has cost her dearly.
Cost her dearly, indeed.